Archive for the ‘thailand’ Category

Taking photos from a kayak in the ocean (i.e. saltwater) borders on impossible with a non-waterproof camera. I have tried a few things over the years, but have never really been satisfied. Using an underwater housing isn’t ideal as the lens is covered with a salt film all the time which is extremely hard to remove. GoPro is OK, but not really what I need.This year I tried using my little Ricoh GR with the Ricoh GW-3 Wide Adapter (21mm). Again, not ideal as I had to keep it in a dry bag under my kayak skirt, but I still managed to get a few keepers.I also used a Singh-Ray Color Combo which makes nice BW conversions but slows my ISO down considerably.Here are a few samples. Not sure what I will do next year….

Our our last 600 km kayak trip down the Thai coast I shot a ton of GoPro time lapse, but never looked at them till a couple of weeks ago. I found enough images to make this little vid.This is what it looks like out there.

I am now available for photographing kids here in Bangkok. This town has some great locations to do some candid images – temples, parks, Chinatown, klong rides. Here is one of my favourite temples.You can check out more of my kids work, here and here.

Feathercraft Wisper XP

Feathercraft Wisper XP

One of the best big ticket purchases of my adult life is my Feathercraft Wisper XP kayak. My friend just bought a used 5 series BMW here in Hong Kong for what this thing cost me, but it is worth every hard earned dollar. The thing fits in a bag that goes on buses, trains, planes, boats, whatever. I have taken three fairly large trips with it.

The biggest of these was a 560 km trip last winter, where my buddy Tim Morch and I paddled the entire west coast of Thailand, from the Burmese border to the Malaysian border. We averaged 30 kms a day, which might not sound like a lot, but it felt significant. The first week is a sort of hell on the body, but after that it gets much easier. I reckoned it was around 250,000 paddle strokes, of which about 150,000 hurt.

I recently photographed an upmarket housing development on the island of Koh Samui, in the Gulf of Thailand. The last time I had been there was 1990 when bungalows were 2 bucks and you ate dinner in the ramshackle restaurants that lined the beach. Well those days are over. If you have US$1M+ you can consider owning one of these amazing places, designed by the Bali-based architect Gary Fell. (If you don’t have the cash, you can rent these joints.)